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Group Dynamics: Team Sales
January 25, 2007
You're probably selling in teams, but are you doing it correctly?
By Betsy Cummings
Studies reveal that more than 75 percent of today's companies sell in teams. That must mean that they've mastered the method, right? Wrong. Sadly while the majority of American companies sell in groups most operate at a substandard level, say experts who study their processes. What stymies sales teams most? A lack of product or service knowledge, a fuzzy picture of each team member's role in selling, and a lack of cohesiveness in preparing to sell as a group, particularly in communicating, experts say. "Product development cycles are much shorter than even a decade ago," says Tim Sullivan, director, Sales Performance International, a sales consultancy in Charlotte, N.C. Not to mention, "companies have doubled or tripled the number of products being introduced every year. There's more for salespeople to have to master in order to successfully sell."
That's a burden that a seller alone simply can't handle. As sales processes have gotten more complex, companies have moved largely to team sales in the past decade. And while that's not a new practice, the fact that they still haven't mastered the strategy should be a wake up call.
At Hickok Cole Architects in Washington D.C., Marilynn Mendell, director of corporate communications and marketing, says group selling is pretty much the only way the company closes business these days. But until they hired a sales consultant, they weren't always polished as a group when selling. Determining exactly who would communicate when, and how presentations would fall into place seamlessly took months of practice among the company's teams which might consist of six people or more.
"The majority of people don't practice enough and they wing it," then end up "falling all over each other," in a disorganized mass presentation, says Mark Sincevich, a senior consultant for The Millennium Group International, a business coaching firm in Vienna, Va., who helped coach sellers at Hickok Cole.
So flawless do roles and team selling strategies need to be, Sincevich says, that at Hickok, he coached them to get down to details as specific as when the seller who is an environmental expert should step in, make her case, and then step back out.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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